It has become a materialistic age. The same science that has produced our material progress is responsible for the death of the old beliefs.
[W]e learn about the tension in our mind. Its name is “fear.”
From Gateway to the Miraculous, by Wolfe Lowenthal
We headed across the border to Canada last night for an evening of curling. It was the first time Sarah and I have ever played and I must say, it is a lot of fun.
One of the biggest challenges is just walking around on an ice rink, especially when one foot is taped up to make it slide even more. I’m proud to say that out of all of the slips and falls, neither Sarah nor myself fell once.
The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra is one of the best movies I have every seen. You owe it to yourself to find a theatre showing it and see it. I was literally falling out of my seat laughing and my ribs actually hurt. If you like movies such as The Army of Darkness you have got to watch this one. I plan on owning the DVD and watching it annually.
It’s filmed in actual Skeletorama and involves Atmospearium — the rarest element — scientists, mutants, aliens, and, of course, a skeleton. Oh, and happy woodland creatures.
Please watch this movie I am talking about so that you will have seen and enjoyed this enjoyable movie.
I sleep now.
(Go see the movie so that makes sense, OK?)
I’m doing some freelance web work and they want to add a message board to the site. I found a couple of PHP/MySql versions that looked pretty good, and pretty popular (Invision Power Board, vBulletin and the free phpbb).
Now the woman who hired me is familiar with Infopop, but ask me to look at various solutions. My recommendation was vBulletin or Invision Power Board. (There appear to be nearly identical.) She looked at them and is still fixated on Infopop.
Now, I don’t particularly care what we use. But for some reason I’m not keen on using Infopop because it uses Perl and CGI instead of the PHP/MySql combo. I’m not sure why that makes a difference to me since I don’t actually have to do any programming to any of the systems — they are all plug-and-play.
So now I’ve got to take a look at a demo for Infopop and see how it works. Does anyone have experience with any of these products (or similar ones)? Or does anyone have thoughts on Perl/cgi vs PHP/MySql? Is it six of one, half dozen of the other? Share you thoughts…
In the process of cleaning out our office closet this past weekend, I came across an old poem I wrote, with its corresponding journal entry, for an English class back in 1989.
The poem is OK, but what caught my attention was the what I wrote in the journal entry:
… I found myself trying to write on two themes with no connection between them. The first theme that developed was the original [one] intended for the journal. It was going to simply be a recollection of things from my past, things I don’t want to forget, and things I want my children to experience. With this last bit I started to get the second though, which crept into the end of the poem. This second theme involved preserving our world for our children to inherit. At our present rate I’m afraid that there won’t be a world for my children.
I was rather surprised to hear myself saying that 15 years ago, and I still feel that way. Either I was more insightful that I realized, or things simply haven’t changed for the better.
This all prompted me to think about when our world started to go down hill? When did we (Americans mostly) become so stupid, fat and lazy? When did movies and television start to suck? My answer, verified by my long-lost poem, is around the mid-1980s. In my lifetime that is the first decade of real prosperity and excess cash. We had passed through the gas crisis, Reagan was illustrating how to spend and life seemed pretty good.
And we promptly forgot what it meant to spend wisely; to care about things; to think. The 1990s continued the general prosperity and economic strength, which lead to continued spending — urban sprawl, fast-food obesity, Springer and his ilk, “Reality” TV.
Perhaps our current economic slow down (you must disregard Bush, I don’t know what world he lives in — the economy is not doing fine. Don’t believe me, just ask the 4,000 people who have been laid off by my parent company in recent months) will help people realize that should take more care. Perhaps, with less income and movie prices at ridiculous levels, the audience will demand getting what they paid for. Perhaps.
So tell me, when do you think the world began to suck? (I realize this is incredibly pessimistic, but those of you that know me well, know this is me.)
Everyone, wish my mom a happy birthday.
And while you’re at it, me too. Yes, I was born on my mom’s birthday. I’m now 36 and doing pretty well with that fact. I treated myself to not going to work today. Instead, I’ve played Icewind Dale all day long. The new computer and birthday-present video card are killer. The game flies along now with no artifacts or stutters.
For those who care (Patrick) I ended up getting the nVidia G-Force FX 5200. It’s got 128 Mb of DDR RAM, 128 bit interface, AGP 8X, DVI and S-video outputs, supports duel monitors and Direct X 9. I’ve now got more desktop space (having it set to 1152 X 864; I’ll try 1200 later I think) and the graphics just clip along.
I did take a break long enough to read a bunch more of The Da Vinci Code. That is one engaging book. I’m a bit more than half-way through it. I was tempted to just read it all day, but I haven’t played Icewind Dale in a long time. I’ll finish the book off this weekend.
On Saturday we had a two hour t’ai chi class with a special guest. The class was all about relaxing the whole body. We went through the Nine Gates (ankles, knees, hips, small of back, neck, top of head, shoulders, elbows and wrists) as well as worked on the 5 principles.
Based on what the teacher talked about, including his own practice, I’m going to try a new routine. When I get home I’ll do the full form followed by nine 1st thirds, each one focused on one of the nine gates. I tried it today and it felt pretty good. I also worked in a couple of minutes of posturing to help strengthen and relax my legs.
One question that got answered was “how do you focus on one body part?” I know I’ve had that problem. Surprise, the answer is simple: While performing a first third focused on, say the ankles, just keep repeating to yourself “relax the ankles; relax the ankles.” It really helped keep my mind on the part in question. The sensations were also rather profound as I could feel each part open and move in a way I’ve never felt before. I think with regular practice this should produce some very interesting and noticeable results.
I came across a very interesting photo-journal of Chernobyl. It made me want to cry, and yet there are horses there. Amazing text and images.
(Link courtesy of Warren Ellis.)
I’ve finally had time to finish off the photo album of my computer rebuild. Once I had the images sorted out I was trying to find a quick and easy way to build a photo album. The answer: JAlbum.
This is a really cool, easy-to-use and customizable album generator. And it’s free! If you build online albums I’d suggest checking it out. All I need to do now is build a custom skin for it to match the rest of my site. (I chose this rather bland one, but there are several really cool skins/templates that come with the program.)
